#GamerGate: ‘Nowhere On My Site Does It Say We Are Journalists’ Says Destructoid Owner

One Angry Gamer "After Pinsof’s story got out, Destructoid owner Yanier “Niero” Gonzalez stepped forward to issue his take on the situation. He wanted people to know what his site stood for and the difficulty in making the decisions that he made."

Honestly though, you don't have to be a "Journalist" to get into a site like Destructoid. You just have to have good writing skills (that's subjective.... JUST like reviews right? lol). I know several people who started with their own blog or free site who know have gigs at big name sites. They have absolutely no schooling or experience otherwise. So again, not necessarily Journalists, just people who enjoy to write and have their word heard.

Apart from the headline trying to get rise out of you, reality is if you read the story and read between the lines, it is clear what is going on.

It is an insubordinate employee, and an employeer discussing with his peers what to do. As a "boss" myself, there are situations that I want to handle professionally, yet might not have experienced before so I ask my peers in the industry.

I also, don't think gaming is big enough to have serious "journalists" with a degree that went to school and at least discussed some of this ethical topics. Heck, even if they discussed it, it is far to easy to fall on the dark side.

"Real journalists" do it all the time let alone amateur hobby journalists.

Regarding Gamgergate and those opposing. I think both has it's points, but I think the extremes on both sides are the problem.

Agreed and furthermore if this account is correct they also broke the law through collusion. So not only are they not professionals, they are also criminals. One wonders how any critique the deliver can be trusted.

my head hurts trying to follow this breadcrumb trail of he said she said nonsense.

Just sound like a bunch of kids who grew up deciding to be game journo's but didn't actually pay any attention in class. So much immaturity, corruption, back stabbing and lies. I don't trust any of these guys.

I just want to read about games, their design aesthetics, new technologies, exciting changes, new experiences and thought provoking opinion pieces. I don't want to read about feminism and games, unscrupulous practices, bias writing and who got a death threats today from an antisocial twat from the interntz.

These sites have been contributing so heavily to the next gen console war, they have been very instrumental in causing wide spread FUD regarding anything to do with our favourite pastime. And we have just been lapping it all up, puppets dancing to the pulls of their strings.

We need to wake up and stop letting these idiots dictate our emotions, their own game of click-baiting has led to a very unpleasant climate on almost every gaming forum. It's just stupid. Everywhere I look, gamers are arguing with each other over the most stupid sh1t, they have got us right where they want us.

Guess a prerequisite for ethical behavior is calling yourself a journalist.

Being a reporter of the news, IMO, is enough to warrant having some code of ethics, but guess I don't know what's what.

If they just want to be game bloggers, then whatever, if they can easily admit they don't care about having an ethical standard, just means I don't have to take whatever they say seriously, so better off just getting whatever they report from a site that tries to have ethical behavior.

Because its not being reported by the popular media. So long as the organizations like the Times and the Guardian side with anti-#GG, that narrative will be the most popular.

There's also the added BS given that since pro-#GG is about journalistic integrity, if that ever does manage to become the popular argument people are going to be asking why those news groups took the stances they did.

Fortunately, most don't believe those big anti-GG articles and are calling them out. It can be seen whenever the comments aren't censored. So they may be guiding the ("journalistic") narrative but they are all continuing to lose their credibility together.

Because utterly insane social justice warriors have been pushing some ridiculous agenda that equates people supporting gamergate to misogynists. It's a bizarre mess of a situation, to be honest, which isn't helped by Anita Sarkeesian faking death threats to further her career and popularity.

For some reason, when the Zoe Quinn scandal broke a lot of social justice warriors jumped to her defense rather than taking the time to stop and think about how people were disgusted by the nepotism, rather than the fact that she's a woman. It's stupid, but Anita saw an opportunity for publicity and the whole thing has spiraled out of control at this point. Gamergate supporters have been vilified and now less people want anything to do with the movement. In a way, it's kind of fascinating to see how public opinion was so easily manipulated and turned against those wanting honesty and openness, but it's also a little depressing.

faking death threats? damn you guys are living in a fantasy world. i feel sorry for how delusional you are. you might want to think about living in the real world for once. gamergate....what a pathetic movement full of whiny losers :)

They have an agenda to bring everyone to heel. under there satanic and disgusting socialist bee hive mentality.

Why do you think they push "Hollywood style" AAA games and push multi player so hard in most games, its cause there trying to standardize and make everything a social experience where you no longer think critically for yourself but think the way you have been incrementally programed to think....

and its easy to do when you condition the masses 1st, then anyone who wants to think outside of their standards will be marginalized by the populace they have brainwashed.

its also probably quite easy to review a game without playing it. just read a couple of reviews. give a review score you think fans would appreciate. its pretty sad but we are drowned by content from blogsites that we can actually make websites from paraphrasing everything.

The reason Gamergate is getting thrashed in the media is because everyone that supports it is spread all over the internet. Everyone against it is either running the websites printing the articles or has the ear of people running said websites.

Someone more computer savvy than me, maybe one or several of the big time Youtubers, needs to create their own website in order to pool the whole Gamergate argument into one collective area.

Post the relevant information, videos, goals etc and make it clear that the members of the website do not support violence against women, rape/murder/bomb threats, and everything else these people do to discredit what Gamergate is supposed to stand for.

Ban anyone that trolls or makes threats immediately. Allow only the message of what Gamergate is truly about to be heard. If possible (not sure how you'd do it) require all users to use their real names. People tend to not act so big and bad when you take their anonymity away.

Anyway, that's my two cents on the matter. I haven't seen anyone bring it up yet, so I figured I would. If anyone wants to add to that I'd be glad to have a discussion. I don't care what games you play or system you favor. I don't care about race, religion, sex, or creed. I only care that you play

What we need is a mouth piece that can intelligently bring our arguments to the masses, all the while removing the stigma that has been put on #Gamergate. They even have Seth Rogan against us. Never thoguht id see the day I disagreed with him.

You say "us" as if you're all a single hive mind, yet you aren't. The Stigma was brought on by Gamergate by itself it's created a habitat where hatred can thrive. There might be some good people that want to do something with reason and do things peacefully with good spirit but there's also people that have nothing better to do other than spread hate and threats and other vulgarity under the disguise of the hashtag. I imagine Seth is against those people.

Thats a minute faction within Gamergate who try to use the movement and pervert for stupidity. But to act like that isnt common place in every movement since the dawn of mankind is disingenous. Every movement from occupy to ferguson to even the civil rights have always had to deal with those few. Plenty of people in Gamergate have denounced those few. We even donated up to $70,000 to help women developers and $14,000 to prevent bullying. Over 9,700 people signed boogies online petition denouncing anyone trying to use gamergate for mysoginistic purposes. We even have the #notyourshield going where a plethora of female gamers showed there support thru pictures supporting the movement. Gamergate contacted the Fbi and authorities helping find those people sending them threats. Furthermore the specific threats used by sarkeesian and wuu on the media have no affiliation with gamergate. They just associated them with the movement. So no we didnt create a habitat for hatred to thrive. Also I can show many causes thru gaming sites and twitter where the stopgamergate crowd has thrown out more vitriol. So just stop it. Any fair minded individual looking at the facts can tell where the gamers in the gamergate movement lie. Too many people have been mislead and your unfortunately one of them.

I'm only saying what I've seen and read, it's a clusterfuck I can't make sense out of and I've seen very little of this good you speak off, last few days all I've heard about are death threats and some of the most ridiculous crap i've read and I'm sick of it,and those 2 people you mention are far from the only victims but i know there are victims both sides however it's getting out of control(and you say i'm ignorant) i've been on the fence since the start and noe i'm fed up of seeing it in my twitter feed and pretty much wherever I go. I've read a lot of stuff for and againsts and i'd rather not be apart of it actually i'd just play video games.

It's the difference between journalism and punditry. Reviews are opinions in every form of entertainment. Destructoid is no different. The articles are also opinions expressed by the writers of said articles. It's GamerGate that doesn't seem to understand that.

You can scream for journalistic integrity till your throat gives in but it wont change the fact that this is how the vast majority of gaming sites operate. Destructoid is not the New Your Times or the Wall Street Journal. It's just a site were people give their opinions on the games they play and the news and rumors in the industry. It's all opinion.

And for those wanting accountability then keep dreaming. Fox news isn't held accountable for misleading the public and CNN doesn't get a gold star for sticking to the truth. That is left for the people to decide. Why would you think this would apply to gaming sites when the top tier news organizations aren't held to that standard. If you don't trust Destructoid then don't click on their articles. Click on someone you do trust. Seems pretty simple right?

Can someone tell me what this Gamergate is all about. I haven't been living under a rock. I just haven't been interested in this gamergate thing and that girl who slept with people to get recognised before now 😨😨

I remember Destructoid as the site who hired a Microsoft guy who stated (as fact) that Microsoft was working on a MGS4 release and when confronted about the matter, called everyone a Sony Fanboy douche...

That was, obviously, YEEEARS ago and that prompted me to stop giving the sites clicks.

In case you wanna read that "famous" article, here it is. I believe actually the guy who wroted were fired:

Anon would probably bother with more important things. It's not really their thing to try and deal with this kind of stuff.

Also, the GameJournosPro has already been leaked, so no reason to really hack it anymore. Anyhow, GG should stay on the up and up. No reason to try and commit crimes to make our point. Karma is a cold mistress, and eventually it'll all come out in some way, because realistically, it's hard to imagine people will allowed themselves to be played indefinately from the other camp.

It's at a point now where the majority KNOWS of the corruption & it's no longer hearsay. There is no realistic or legal reason for this GameJournoPro network. GamersGate needs to follow through bring it out in the open. So we can clear it out & start again. The industry is at breaking point in every respect & in some form due to the mess it has created itself!